RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen

Low-Price Bandit

Wal-Mart announced that its second-quarter sales in 2004 were
lower than expected. By blaming unseasonable weather and lackluster
Father's Day sales, the behemoth retailer avoided the truth:
Consumers have figured it out. We're not shopping at the Big Box
stores any more.

We've figured out that low prices for consumers mean low wages for
workers, no benefits, outsourcing jobs, and environmental
degradation.

And, it may turn out, the law will back us up.

In late June, a federal judge ruled that a class-action
sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart will go forward as the
largest civil-rights case against an employer in US history. It could
affect 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees.

For years, we've heard the whispered stories that go like this:
John and Mary applied at Wal-Mart the same day. He was offered a
dollar more per hour than she was for the same job. Or, she had
better credentials but he was offered the better job. With this case,
the stories will come out.

For labor leaders, the lawsuit provides a new opportunity to
organize. All the Big Box stores have benefited by hiring part-timers
rather than full-time workers, then cutting hours when sales got
slow. Now the main beneficiaries of this employment strategy, CEOs in
the home office, will come under special scrutiny. Take Target CEO
Robert Ulrich's pay package, for example: A salary of $1,571,925, and
a bonus of $3.3 million. After he exercised his $17 million in stock
options, the year's take was over $21 million.

But lest we feel smug, let's remember that consumers share the
guilt with these home office bigwigs. We fed the 800-pound gorilla
with our tacit agreement that as long as they delivered low prices we
wouldn't look at their business practices. But now we're figuring it
out.

Everyone loses when the low-price leaders refuse to supply health
insurance or pay enough to cover child care and, instead, show
employees how to bolster their puny paychecks by using social
services provided at taxpayer expense.

As a final insult, the drive for lower prices means that suppliers
who incur the cost of treating employees fairly can't compete with
the cheaters. One by one, American manufacturers give up and go out
of business or move their manufacturing offshore. So, while
challenging the race-to-the-bottom, the lawsuit also issues a call to
the dwindling number of consumers still going to the Big Boxes: Will
we change our habits and buy from neighbors and independents, even if
the prices are higher? Higher prices: Ah, there's the rub!

Our craving for low prices fuels the drive to social injustice and
environmental degradation. Take that broccoli in the fridge. If you
bought it from a Big Box Store, you bought it wrapped as if human
hands had never touched it. Surprise! You bought from the system that
shoves poor farmers off their land, cuts down the trees, burns the
houses and plows up a monoculture.

Then, that system hires the people it displaced, and pays them
barely enough to feed themselves and reproduce. With no education, no
right to organize, no health insurance, the people have no hope of
moving ahead, but the corporation insures itself of a compliant
workforce for the next generations. And, to add insult, your tax
dollars probably paid the corporation incentives to bring that
broccoli into your community.

If, on the other hand, you bought from your neighbor, you
participated in a system that allows the neighbor to set prices so
s/he can raise a family, pay taxes, build your neighborhood, donate
to a favorite non-profit, and buy something from you.

The buy-local phenomenon means more than only supporting your
neighbor. You're also building a community, saving fossil fuels, and
voting for choice in the future. Starting with the broccoli, you'll
soon be supporting happy entrepreneurs who have started bakeries,
restaurants, movie houses in your neighborhood. Take my word for it.
It can work.

Probably the worst part of the race to the bottom is the lowering
of standards for all employers. In Missouri, a recent survey revealed
that 3% of full-time state employees qualify for food stamps and
Medicaid. At the very bottom were the workers for the Department of
Mental Health. Six-hundred-sixty-one of them, mostly the aides
charged with the direct care of the most mentally fragile of our
citizens, depend on state subsidies.

So, to review:

What does a business get when they deprive more than half their
employees from raises and opportunities? Every day, low prices.

What does a business get when they threaten suppliers with
extinction if the suppliers don't sell at the lowest possible cost,
even off-shoring jobs to take advantage of poor workers in other
countries? Every day, low prices.

Instead of a happy face, the low-price leaders should wear bandit
masks when they bag your money at the cash register.

Margot Ford McMillen farms and teaches English at a college in
Fulton, Mo. Email: mcmillm@jaynet.wcmo.edu.